Network-based services systems have become widely available in recent years. Network-based services systems are typically geographically and logically separate from the client subscribing to the network-based service. Network-based services may be storage resources (e.g., virtual disk drives, RAID) and/or virtual compute resources (e.g., cloud storage and/or computing), for example. The resources in various configurations may be used, for example, by businesses (e.g., on-line retail, web based hosting services, financial services) for backup data storage, records storage, to store product images, process customer requests, and/or other computing tasks. In network-based service systems, the client may be charged for a certain usage of services of the network-based services system. The charges may be based on various metrics, such as, the amount of data transmitted, the amount of compute resources used, and/or the amount of storage used. To determine the usage information, hardware and software based measurement tools may be used within the network-based services system. These tools may measure the types of usage discussed above and store that data in a format that allows for billing based on the data.
As an example, a network-based services system may be configured as a storage service to provide storage for backup data or web hosting services. The data may be stored in client specific partitions. Charges for the storage service may be by the amount of data stored (e.g., per MByte or per GByte). Additional charges may incur based on the number of gets/puts for each data item transferred between the client and the network-based storage service. A get may be defined as a retrieval of data from a client bucket and a put may be defined as a store of data to a client bucket. As another example, a network-based services system may provide clients a network tunneling technology (e.g., VPN, IPSec) to ensure security of the data transmissions. The network-based services may also charge the client for the VPN connection time. To determine client usage charges, a service meter may be implemented internal to the network-based services system to measure and record the client usage.
However, in the case of system instability, internal metering records may become corrupted leading to incorrect billing statements being sent to customers. For example, an internal network interruption or service meter process failure may lead to incorrect or corrupt metering records. This may result in billing errors for a client (e.g., subscriber) to the network-based services system. As a result of such errors, the network-based services provider may under bill a client resulting in lost revenue, and/or over bill a client potentially resulting in a loss of goodwill.
While the technology described herein is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the disclosure to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present disclosure as defined by the appended claims.